The Midnight Tour by Richard Laymon Read Free Book Online Page A

Like so many other things that have to do with Beast House, it’s a mystery. And it’ll have to stay a mystery, because a positive i.d. was never made and the so-called, Hairless Orang-utan of Borneo disappeared in about 1988. All the Jasper’s Oddities exhibits vanished one night, and the building was demolished shortly after that.”
    “Did Janice Crogan ever get a look at the Hairless Orang-utan?” Wayne asked.
    “No, she never did.”
    “She should’ve taken it back,” Derek said. “If it was her monster and somebody stole it...”
    “I talked to Janice about it, and she told me that she was glad to be rid of the thing. She didn’t want it back. When she was keeping it in her museum, she had to face it every single day. It was an awfully vivid reminder of those terrible experiences she’d had in 1979. Also, she told me that it didn’t smell terribly fresh.”
    “Oh, yuck,” said the same girl who had cried out “BEAST HOUSE!” a few minutes earlier.
    “And what’s your name, young lady?” Patty asked.
    “None of your beeswax.”
    “And what an unusual name that is,” Patty said. “Do you have a nickname? Wax?”
    “Try Bitch,” Owen whispered.
    Monica rolled her eyeballs upward.
    “Her name’s Shareel,” said the man sitting beside her.
    Probably her father.
    “Thank you,” Patty told him. “And thank you for your comment about the odor, shareel. According to Janice , the odor was faint but very yucky . She said it smelled like a dead rat.”
    Shareel went, “Ooooooo.”
    “Apparently, that’s what happens if taxidermy isn’t done just right.”
    “This is disgusting,” Monica whispered.
    “Yeah,” Owen said, smiling.
    “Don’t tell me you like it.”
    “Okay, I won’t.”
    Patty pointed to someone and said, “Yes, Marv?”
    “What can you tell us about its apparatus?”
    She grinned and blushed. “It’s apparatus?”
    “You know.”
    “I certainly know, all right. But we don’t talk about that.”
    “It’s in the books.”
    “You’re right. It’s in the books. Not in the movies, though, and not on our tour. Not on this tour. If you’re really curious about that sort of thing, we do offer a special, adults only tour of Beast House. Maybe some of you have heard of it. The Midnight Tour? It’s quite an event. Saturday nights only. A trip through Beast House starting at midnight, with our best guide leading the way. It’s a hundred dollars per person, but the price includes a picnic dinner on the grounds of Beast House—with a no host bar for the drinkers among you—followed by a special showing of The Horror at the town movie theater, and finally the special, unexpurgated tour in which you learn all the stuff that’s too nasty for our regular tours. If any of you are interested, you can make reservations at the ticket office.”
    “They only have it on Saturday nights?” Marv asked.
    “That’s right. One night a week.”
    “Does the bus go out to it?”
    “There isn’t any special run for the Midnight Tour. What people sometimes do, though, is come in on the Saturday morning bus, spend the whole day, do the Midnight Tour, stay overnight at one of the motels in town, then catch the Sunday afternoon bus back to San Francisco. If you don’t have your own car, that’s about the only sensible way to do it. Imagine what it’d cost for a cab ride.”
    “But kids aren’t allowed?” Derek asked, sounding disappointed.
    “No kids under the age of eighteen. Beast House rules.”
    “That stinks.”
    “I know. But just figure it’ll give you something to look forward to doing when you’re a little older.”
    “It still stinks.”
    “Well, there won’t be much said on the Midnight Tour that isn’t in Janice Crogan’s books. So if you’re really interested, Derek, read the books. Speaking of which, we’ve come back to where I was heading; one of the main participants in the Beast House mayhem of 1979 was an eighteen year old girl named Janice Crogan.